2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
One of the most published psychologists in our time remains Sigmund Freud, to be convinced of this it is enough to go to any bookstore and find a shelf labeled Psychology. Almost every psychologist and psychotherapist still considers it his duty to either criticize or extol his work. Freud's aura is so inflated that psychologists such as Carl Jung and Alfred Adler are still considered his students, although this is not the case.
Alfred Adler, being originally a general practitioner by profession, saw the root cause of neuroses in a certain inferiority of internal organs. It seems to me that it is precisely these views that now prevent a fair assessment of many of his ideas. But in many psychotherapeutic concepts the influence of individual psychology remained. This is especially evident in the works of W. Frankl, A. Maslow, R. May, J. Bujenthal, I. Yalom and others.
I will talk about how I discovered Individual Psychology and what I found useful in Alfred Adler's The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology in 1920.
Inferiority complex
This is the key concept of Individual Psychology. Usually A. Adler is credited with the introduction of this very concept. Let's take the definition from Wikipedia.
Inferiority complex - a set of psychological and emotional feelings of a person, expressed in a sense of their own inferiority and an irrational belief in the superiority of others over themselves.
This phenomenon is now usually attributed to short people and people with some physical defects. In modern psychology inferiority complex considered as a separate type of neurosis.
A. Adler himself considered inferiority complex only in cooperation with superiority complexas the basis of human behavior. He believed that the feeling of inferiority and the desire for superiority is inherent in all people and forms the basis not only of neuroses, but also of our healthy ambitions.
According to Individual psychology, even in early childhood, in conditions of complete helplessness in front of large adults, a vague, unconscious bogus targetas final compensation feelings of inferiority and life plan her achievements.
Modern culture is imbued with a desire for power, celebrity and wealth. But for many people, these goals become very bizarre and can be attributed rather to fictions or imaginations in the "as if" style. And despite their obvious meaninglessness and isolation from reality, they affect their entire life.
Alfred Adler wrote that this motivation is inherent in both healthy and sick, but the neurotic has stronger psychological defenses of his life plan, and his "specific" goals are always on the "useless" side of life. Neurotic bogus target does not motivate a person, but interferes with a productive life and often leads to the formation of a neurotic personality and the development of mental disorders.
Hostility
Interesting is A. Adler's understanding of the origin hostility in the human soul.
According to Individual Psychology, it is striving for excellence brings to human life hostility, deprives of immediacy of sensations and removes it from reality, constantly pushing to commit violence over it.
Man possessed bogus target, shows its hostility, both open and hidden. In return, he expects the same attitude towards himself.
In this view, it is important that the source of hostility is the person himself. Not an instinct for destruction, an unbridled libido or a biological propensity for crime, but a neurotic's view of the world.
It becomes clear why it occurs so often treat life like a fight … Why is neurotic in such conditions does not live, but survives.
When a person begins to reconsider his life attitudes, he ceases to be afraid of the world and begins to see the vulnerability of people, and not their supposed hostility. The words of Marcus Aurelius, reinforced by Irwin Yalom, “We are all creations for the day”, are remembered and understood.
Psychological resource
Even A. Adler had a different understanding of the inferiority complex associated with psychic energy.
Inferiority complex - This is the production of a lack of energy, attention and will by a neurotic in order to justify the impossibility of achieving his overestimated goals, such as godlikeness and omnipotence. (Alfred Adler "Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology" 1920)
I will quote A. Adler "The patient will always develop just as much psychic energy as he needs to stay on his line leading to superiority, to male protest, to godlikeness."
This understanding inferiority complex contradicts such a popular now concept as psychological resource … It turns out that the neurotic himself regulates the volume of his vital forces and does not produce them in sufficient quantities, but as soon as he changes his neurotic life style, they reappear with him. This calls into question the limitation of the patient. psychological resources.
You need to believe more in the strength of a person to cope with psychological difficulties on their own.
The goals of neurosis
The understanding of the goals of neurosis in Individual psychology is interesting.
The superiority of the neurotic personality is in dreams and cannot be fully realized in life. This circumstance forces the neurotic to form evidence of his illness and the corresponding arrangement (picture).
All this unconscious work has several goals:
- Justify not achieving triumph in life. Everyone is to blame for the fact that my life did not take place
- Shirk responsibility for his life. Infantile position "I can't"
- Put your goals in a bright spot. All in spite of the disease.
Thus, neurosis creates itself and its symptoms and is essentially a soap bubble, symptoms for the sake of symptoms. Sometimes it is enough for a neurotic to show his own contribution to the disease and turn him away from his problems into the world.
This is confirmed by such effective psychotherapeutic approaches as: Logotherapy by V. Frankl, Provocative therapy by F. Farrell, Sedona-method by L. Levenson, etc.
The main thing that a person needs to overcome neurosis is the desire to recover!
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